


Aegis

by White Aster (white_aster)



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 11:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12011592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: After Omega, Shepard and Garrus find that even though it's been two years, they still understand each other perfectly.(Platonic or non-platonic relationship, take your pick.  Spoilers through the Archangel recruitment mission.)





	Aegis

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Set in early ME2, pretty soon after the Archangel mission, with attendant spoilers for that mission. Garrus' armor is the special purchaseable one, which I got for him at the first opportunity, when I realized that otherwise he was going to wear that busted armor the whole damn game. I figured that he'd have to buy it somewhere, and Thunawanuro seemed like the safest place in the Terminus Systems to go shopping. Also, this assumes my first playthrough setup, which was Shepard being a plain-Jane soldier through ME1 and then becoming a vanguard in ME2. Thus the omgwtfing about her suddenly having biotics.

"I'd be careful if I were you. Spend too much time off the ship and they might think you're trying to make a break for it."

Shepard turned from watching a load of ore moving elcor-slow up a mass field column toward one of Thunawanuro Orbital 3's docking arms. "Won't get far without a ship."

Garrus snorted in dismissal. "I'm sure you could come up with something. I can think of at least five ways to sneak us both off this station."

She found herself smiling. _Don't tempt me._ "Only five?"

Garrus spread his hands in a shrug, sitting down on the bench a companionable distance away. "It's late, and I'm tired." 

It was. Time to head back to the Normandy and attempt to get some shut-eye, in fact. Shepard found herself reluctant to move, though. Much better to stay here and pretend that she wasn't avoiding her own ship. Chat with Garrus. Pretend that things were normal. "Been shopping, I see. Nice armor. Makes you look a lot less like you took a missile to the face."

"Eh." Garrus looked down doubtfully at his gauntlet, outlined in a low-grade blue glow from the integrated lights. "It's not terrible. So long as I don't need to sneak up on anything in the dark."

It _was_ more...eye-catching than Garrus' usual style, but his choices had likely been limited. Not that that would keep her from needling him. "They didn't have anything without its own built-in party lighting, I take it?"

He huffed a laugh. "Are you kidding? This is the Terminus systems. The armor here is either merc company standard issue or flashy enough to make a freelancer look impressive. And I assumed that walking around with a Blue Suns logo on my chest wouldn't exactly help us keep a low profile."

"Probably not. It's not bad, though. Y'know, overall." She reached out to flick a nail on the pauldron. It sounded back like good, dense ceramics. Flashy, maybe, but quality materials, at least. "I was beginning to wonder if you were planning to wear that busted armor all the way through the Omega 4 relay."

Garrus' mandibles twitched. Shepard had learned that turian mandible movement was way more complex than lip movement on humans, but she thought that that twitch was amusement rather than agitation. Probably. "It's not like I was spoiled for choice. Funnily enough, turian armor wasn't in the Normandy's stores."

Shepard pulled a look of exaggerated surprise. "No kidding? Weird. Must've been an oversight on our benefactor's part." She leaned back on her hands and changed the subject. The last thing she wanted to talk about was the Illusive Man. "Speaking of missiles to the face, how you doing?"

Garrus put a digit to his jaw, opening his mouth wide enough that she could actually see the bony ridge that turian anatomy provided instead of teeth. "Better. The doc said I should avoid getting punched in the face for the next month or two, but after that it should be good as new."

"A whole month? Think you can manage?"

Garrus appeared to consider. "It'll be a trial. No promises."

She smiled, gaze returning to the climbing cargo, and the silence stretched. She only realized her eyes had drifted closed when she opened them and found Garrus leaning slightly into her field of vision, those sharp blue eyes watching her. "What about you?" he asked.

She pulled herself up out of her slump, stretching through the ache in her back. "What about me?"

"Don't give me that. You've been off ever since we met on Omega."

"Afraid I'm not the real Shepard? Some kind of Cerberus zombie clone?" Wow, that came out less teasing and more bitter than she'd been going for. She tried to tack a smile on the end of it but knew it wouldn't fool a blind vorcha, let alone an ex-C-Sec detective.

Bless his little turian heart, Garrus' reply was quick, certain, utterly confident. "No. I know you, and you're Shepard. But I also know how you react under stress. And right now, you're acting about five thresher maws worth of stressed. So what's wrong?"

"Hah." The burst of sound was a lot less of a laugh than she'd been going for, too. He was right, though, damn him, and finally she just thought, 'you know what, fuck it,' sighed, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids until she saw red stars. "Everything's wrong." 

It was hard to put into words. But all that time bitching to herself about how she didn't have anyone trustworthy around meant that she had no real excuse now that Garrus was here.

She murmured into the darkness behind her eyelids. "I just feel...not quite right in my skin. I look at my face and wonder if my cheekbones always looked like that." She pulled her hands away, looking at her gloved fingers framed against the darkness of space. "Or if my fingers were always this short. Everything works, but my aim is off. I stumble sometimes because my feet feel too long. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but I fucking swear that they made me about a centimeter taller." 

Garrus' eyes flicked to the affected body parts. Shepard wasn't sure whether she'd wanted to be taken seriously or for him to agree that it was ridiculous. But he didn't laugh, and somehow the tacit agreement that she might be right was worse. 

Shepard sighed. "It's all...little shit, really. You know, compared with being dead. But it just keeps reminding me that I don't even know how much of this body is actually original anymore. I've got aches still in places that I didn't know had actual nerves. And the fucking biotics. Flare up at the weirdest damn times...." 

"Hah. Your new moves scared the crap out of me, by the way, on Omega." Ceramic composite clicked dully against itself as Garrus shifted and stretched. "The first time you flared up I was looking around for an enemy biotic before I realized it was coming from _you_." His mandibles wiggled. "However, I _do_ forgive you. Watching you charge into Garm and then _punch him to death_ was almost worth the whole rocket to the face afterward."

She shook her head, not able to help a smile. "Yeah, that fight did not exactly go as planned." She'd come up the stairs to find the huge krogan way too close to Garrus and obviously getting ready to charge. Fear and anger had boiled in her belly, and before she'd known it, she'd been wreathed in blue glow, shooting toward the huge krogan on a blastwave of biotic fury that literally took her breath away. She'd punched him because she'd been in melee range and there was nothing else to do, because slamming her gauntleted fist into his thick skull over and over until her fist splatted into brains had been the easiest way to channel the power when she couldn't focus enough to put it anywhere else. "I was just so pissed, and everything was moving so fast. Didn't have time to think."

She closed her eyes and breathed for a second. "Which is the story of the last few weeks, really. So yeah, I'm tense." She pulled off a glove and rubbed her hand over her face. "Sorry. I didn't mean to dump all this on you. Haven't been sleeping well."

Garrus leaned back, arms crossing over his chest. "On a starship that's a ghost of the old Normandy, bugs every five feet, surrounded by people you can't trust, and a live AI that is no doubt recording every last word and bodily function? I can't _imagine_ why you can't relax, Shepard. You must not be trying hard enough."

She chuckled, feeling some of the tightness in her shoulders drain away. _I missed you, you sarcastic asshole._ It felt like forever since she'd been able to actually be herself. Talking with Dr. Chakwas and Joker was close, but...they were Cerebus now. She wanted to trust them. She really did. But she couldn't forget Kahoku or his crew, or anything else she'd learned about Cerberus in the search for Saren. "Have I mentioned how really... _really_ glad I am that you're here, Garrus?"

"Not lately, no. I'm just glad you found me at all. Someone has to watch your back. Someone _without_ a Cerberus logo tattooed on their ass." He looked thoughtful, eyes narrowing. "We'll have to find some of the others. Build up our strength so we can outnumber our keepers."

She sighed, looking out the window again. The cargo was still moving, ever so slowly. "I saw Tali. Did I tell you that? A day or two after I woke up...she was at Freedom's Progress."

"No, I hadn't heard. Is she all right?"

"...yeah, I guess. She was investigating the colony's disappearance, same as us. Looking for someone on Pilgrimmage. Same guy who gave us the intel on the seeker swarms." Shepard stared down at her hands, watched as they gathered up her gloves. "I asked her to come with me. She said no." And that had hurt. That had hurt a lot more than she'd expected or wanted to think about, coming as it had on top of the whole being dead for two years thing. Of waking up in pain and feeling so strangely out of her depth.

Garrus just stared at her. "She said no?"

Shepard shrugged. "There was baggage. Evidently Cerberus had screwed over the quarians at some point, and...we didn't have much time to work things out. She seemed like she didn't quite trust me. Like she thought I was on the wrong side."

"Ah. Well, I guess I can't fault her there."

"I know, I know. Believe me, I don't trust Cerberus any further than I can throw the Normandy, but every choice I made since waking up seemed like the best one at the time. I'm...out of the loop, here. Out of options. But unless Cerberus is leading me on with the galaxy's biggest con job, the Collectors really _are_ a threat, and the Reapers really _do_ need to be stopped. And I need weapons and a crew and a ship to help with that. That's all I want from them."

"Hey." Garrus' shoulder bumped into hers. "You don't have to justify yourself to me, you know. I've already made up my mind."

"Of course I need to justify it to you. Otherwise, how can I justify it to myself?" She sighed, something loosening in her chest. "I guess I was just...afraid that you'd be as disappointed in me as Tali was."

"Heh. Funny. I was afraid you'd be disappointed in _me_."

"What?" She blinked, her gaze catching oddly on the lighting on his new armor on their way up to his face. "Why?"

His head tilted away, eyes roaming off toward a kiosk in the corner. "Oh, the whole vigilante justice thing. I know our morals don't always exactly line up. I could usually see where you'd lay down the line, but not always." He spread his hands. "I just wasn't sure how much you'd approve of Archangel. Omega doesn't exactly have much law to work on the right side of."

Something had happened, Shepard knew. Something deeper and more personal than a bad mission or even the tarp-covered bodies in Archangel's hideout. It had hung around Garrus since the moment she'd seen him, as stark as the chunk blown out of his old armor. A heaviness. A weight. "Hey. I know I don't have the whole picture yet, but...from what I saw, you were doing good. Every time I asked someone about Archangel, I came away thinking, 'Hey, sounds like a good guy. Bit crazy. Probably need to get him out of here before he gets himself killed--'"

"I was doing _just fine_ I'll have you know," Garrus said primly.

"Uh huh."

"I could have toughed it out! I had a lot of stims left, and they were running out of people to throw at me."

"...right. This from the guy who needed me to go keep the enemy from blasting their way into his basement. And something something rocket to the face?"

"Details." Garrus' head tilted, his eyes following hers out the windows. Silence stretched between them, while behind them the station moved on, noisy and busy even at this hour with turian, batarian, elcor voices. The cargo load outside had finally made it to the top of the field beam. They watched as, very slowly, machinery swung into place, nudging some of the crates onto platforms and others into other field effects to wait in limbo for who knew what.

"I tried," Garrus said, so softly she nearly couldn't hear him over the background babble of the walkway behind them. "To do good. It didn't...go like I expected." He glanced over at her and shook his head slightly, digits on one hand spreading wide, twitching slightly like he was flicking away an interface screen. She just nodded. Not yet. Too soon. Fair enough. "I imagine it was obvious, but I didn't expect to get out of there. After...everything...it seemed fitting."

She squinted at him. That didn't sound like Garrus. Taking half of Omega with him sounded like Garrus, but not that...fatalism. "I don't have to worry about you, do I?" 

"Hmm? Oh, no. No, definitely not. I've got things to do. Debts to pay." His eyes stared out into space, fixed and hard like he was lining up a target. "Don't you worry. I'm not going anywhere." After a moment he came back to himself and pushed himself to his feet. "I should have known better. I try to cheer you up, and you turn the tables on me."

"Did it work?"

"Maybe." Garrus stood, his new armor creaking and scraping slightly as he stretched again, grimacing at one shoulder. "I have some recommendations, by the way."

"Shoot." Shepard stood as well, grimacing as something in her torso pulled. The aches and pains from whatever surgeries Cerberus had used were going away, but still definitely there. Or maybe that had been that lucky shot that one Blood Pack berserker had gotten in. She straightened and followed Garrus as they moved back into the promenade.

"First, we sweep your ridiculously huge quarters for bugs. Mordin gave me the specs of the ones he cleaned out of his lab, and it shouldn't be difficult." 

"Sounds good." She felt her lips pulling back in a probably not terribly nice smirk. "I feel like it'll do Cerberus good for us to establish a few boundaries."

Garrus's eyes narrowed in a smile. "If they thought that they could bring you back, and you would just bare your throat and take instructions, then they're idiots. Second, you get your human-recommended eight hours of sleep if I have to sit guard outside your quarters with a rifle the whole downshift."

"To keep me in?"

"Or others out. Take your pick. Whatever lets you sleep."

"Yes, Mom."

"Third, you never call me your mother again. _Fourth_ you and I start sparring regularly, to get rid of this feeling of you being in the wrong body, which is understandable but not healthy in the least. It's a body and you're in it, that means it's yours. I say learn to love that extra centimeter as giving you just a bit extra leverage." 

"Hah. Fine. Doubt you'll like that extra leverage so much when I'm tossing you around the cargo bay."

"With those stubby little arms? It'll be fun to watch you try."

"Oh, you're going down, Vakarian."

"And last but not least..." He hit the button for the elevator and tipped his head down to look at her. "We go find everyone, up to and including that annoying krogan, convince them you're not your evil clone, go kick the Collectors' asses, and then steal Cerberus' fancy ship to go on a victory lap of every bar in the Terminus systems."

She was smiling again, she noticed, as the elevator opened and two arguing batarians got off. "I like the way you think, Vakarian." She thumped a fist into his pauldron as they stepped in. "I like it a lot."

\-----

That night, EDI was the only listening device left in her quarters, and that was still unnerving, but better, at least. Garrus showed up at 2200 with his weapons and a cleaning kit. She told him he didn't need to sit on the cold hall floor, and he set up shop at the coffeetable. When she came out of the bathroom from getting ready for bed, her quarters smelled, not unpleasantly, of cleaning solution and gun oil and the turian coffee-equivalent he drank. "When are you going to sleep?" she asked.

"I don't need much anymore. I'll take second shift, catch a few hours after breakfast."

Didn't need much. Uh huh. And she was a krogan bellydancer. But Shepard had enough nightmares of her own that she'd let his go untalked-about...for now.

Garrus tilted a finger at the bed. "Go to sleep, Shepard. I've got your back."

She fell asleep easily to the sound of Garrus breaking down his rifle, and if this had been a vid or something, there would have been a soft fade to a happy ending. Instead, she woke five hours later from one of the usual nightmares of being strapped down, of having bits of her cut away and replaced with tech. She just sat there, heart pounding, for a long moment, until the flicker of an omnitool and the sound of Garrus shifting on the couch reminded her he was there.

He was watching her, head tilted in a question, and she shook her head, tossing off the sheet and padding into the bathroom for a piss, face-wash, and a drink of water.

When she came back out, she stared at her console. This is the part where she'd usually just get started on the day's messages.

"Ahem," coughed Garrus, pointing back to the bed.

Her shoulders slumped. "You're kidding."

"Eight hours. That was the deal. You have another two hours and forty-three minutes to go."

She looked at the bed, rumpled and damp, and the dream flashed into her mind's eye again, tiny buzzsaws chewing through her--no. No. 

She took a deep breath, and when she opened her eyes, Garrus was padding over to her. He reached out, his long fingers closing over her shoulder and guiding her back to the bed. "Come on."

She resisted the urge to whine like a five-year-old and drag her feet. But turians were not a terribly touchy-feely people with those they didn't know well, reserving it for close friends and family. Her resident turian had told her as much back on the SR1 when he'd asked her early on what was up with humans and all the personal space invasion. But that just meant he was doing it on purpose. To make a point. She could appreciate that.

Shepard climbed into the bed, grumbling, and Garrus asked, "Would you like...what is it...a glass of warm milk?"

Shepard told him where he could shove a glass of warm milk, and Garrus just hummed noncommittally and sat down on the other side of the bed, back against the headboard. His hand squeezed her shoulder again. "Sleep."

She curled one arm under her pillow and the other reached out, seemingly of its own accord, for his hand as it left her shoulder. She was too slow and her aim was off, her fingers just dropping through the air to the mattress, but it was fairly obvious what she'd been meaning to do. She wasn't sure why, just...the contact was something else to focus on. Other than the tiny buzzsaws. 

Garrus laid his hand down on hers. She wrapped her fingers around his after a few tries to find a good position that worked with the differing number of fingers and the half-inch claws.

"Can't work like this," Garrus said softly, shifting his hand in hers but not pulling away.

"You started it," she murmured back, somewhat nonsensically, closing her eyes. "You'll have to sleep, too, I guess."

"Hnn...if you insist...." She could tell when he turned his 'tool off, as the light no longer danced on her closed eyelids. Without letting go of her hand, he shuffled down, pulling a pillow to him and turning onto his side to face her.

It should have been awkward. They were, after all, in bed together. But it wasn't. It was just Garrus, the hide of his hand hot under her fingers, and she fell asleep to the slight whistle of his breathing. The nightmare didn't come back.

And that was the first time she slept with Garrus Vakarian. She had a lot of fun saying as much at breakfast the next morning, just to watch Joker's face.


End file.
